MPs are urging junior doctors to exempt key units from next weeks stike

The medics were urged to spare casualty, intensive care and maternity departments from their unprecedented action.

And there were calls for them to examine their consciences before joining NHS doctors’ first-ever total strike in England next Tuesday and Wednesday.

It will be the fifth and most drastic stoppage by junior doctors in their long-running dispute over cuts to Saturday overtime pay, offset by a basic pay rise and premium pay for medics working at least one Saturday a month.

Our constituents want to know whether they will be safe on the strike days

Sarah Wollaston

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt insisted to MPs in a statement demanded by Labour that he was not retreating on plans to impose the new contract amid claims of confusion about his legal powers.

Sarah Wollaston, who chairs the Commons Health Select Committee and was a doctor before becoming a Tory MP, told Mr Hunt: “Our constituents want to know whether they will be safe on the strike days.

“Will you join me in calling on the British Medical Association at least to exempt casualty departments and maternity units from this walkout, because we know that even with goodwill arrangements in place to bring people back where hospitals are overwhelmed, that delays will cost lives?”

GETTY

Junior doctors are planning an 'all out' strike next week over wage, cuts and money issues

Mr Hunt agreed, adding: “The departments at most risk are emergency departments, maternity departments and intensive care units and those are the areas we are most keen to make sure that we maintain critical doctor cover over the two strike days.

“I really hope the BMA will cooperate with NHS England as we identify where we think gaps might be.

“We will share those with the BMA and I hope very much they will help us to plug those gaps with junior doctors because in the end no one wants there to be any kind of tragedy.”

Junior doctors' strike: All-out stoppage has begun

Tue, April 26, 2016

Thousands of junior doctors are staging the first all-out strike in the history of the NHS after the Health Secretary made it clear a new contract will go ahead.